Vastu Shanti is worship of God manifested as Vastu, the protector who is believed to reside in every house.

Is it that we now have kids? Is it that our move into a new house in June symbolizes “settling down”? Is this what happens as you grow older?

I’m not a particularly religious person. Nothing against God, mind you, or whatever it is you call a higher power. I self-identify as a Hindu, with its cultural and spiritual aspects. But not its rituals. I see ritualism as a gateway to superstition and superstition as the point at which faith becomes fear-based.

Faith is an intensely personal journey and, for me, doesn’t manifest itself as a chest-thumping, chanting social experience. And in Hinduism, that’s OK. It’s a liberal religion that affords you freedom to customize how you practise it, if you practise it. Guilt-free.

All the more surprising then, this desire to have a traditional “housewarming” ceremony, complete with all the bells (literally) and whistles. Thankfully, I have a husband so secure in his secularity and agnosticism that he’s unfazed by any act of religiosity.

And so the day dawns, bright and warm. We’re up early, ready by 9 a.m. for the priest to arrive from Mississauga.

Shekhar Parkhi, recommended by a friend, drives up to our newly purchased West Rouge home on the eastern edge of Scarborough, looking entirely priestly, dressed in a dhoti (a white wraparound, fashioned into culotte-like pants with pleats in the front). He’s a retired Toronto Hydro employee and conducts on average two housewarming ceremonies a month in the GTA.

He’s going to explain the proceedings in English as we go along, seeing as we, like most folks, don’t understand Sanskrit, the ancient classical language of the Puranas, or scriptures, from which the prayers are taken.

It begins with the entire family leaving the house and re-entering through the front door, right foot crossing the threshold first. According to tradition, the right side is favoured, the left inauspicious. We walk around, blessing the house by dipping a betel leaf (which symbolizes freshness and prosperity) in holy water and sprinkling it in the air in each room. The ritual developed long before the days of home inspectors, when owners would walk around the house to make sure it was safe for living and then move in.

My husband and I then rub a paste of water and holy red powder on our palms and make imprints on a wall. The colour red signifies holiness. The imprints establish ownership of the dwelling and impart a sentiment of fulfilment supported by God’s blessings.

And then we sit down for a two-hour session of prayers. As with all auspicious occasions, it begins with prayers to Ganesha, the cute, elephant-headed god (long story). First, a symbolic bath (sprinkling water), then decorating (applying sandalwood paste, sprinkling coloured rice and powders and placing flowers) and then offering of food, a fruit placed on a betel leaf. All represent respect and reverence.

The belief here is that since God is unseen, we shape him in our own form. What is good for humans is good for God, and so rituals are born, out of habits our ancestors considered healthy and helpful. This, then, is the root of hospitality and lavishing food on guests in a culture where the guest is God.

The prayers will be modular, explains the priest, each series of rituals completed with one deity before moving on to the next. After Ganesha, we seek the blessings of Varuna (water, or life itself), of the nine planets and of the matrukas, which represent maternal energies.

The ringing bell, the Sanskrit chants, the smell of incense sticks — all flashbacks of happy moments in childhood. Yes, rituals are comforting.

We now come to the core of the ceremony: instilling life force into the Vastu, a little embossed metal sheet about an inch by half-inch. We each place a hand to our heart, the other on the sheet, and meditate as the priest delivers the invocation. The now all-powerful Vastu, our protector, is then laid in a certain part of our house, out of sight but omnipresent.

Accompanying the Vastu are a thin stick of gold and five tiny beads of topaz, ruby, emerald, pearl and jade. In an era before banks and RRSPs, explains the priest, people kept their rainy day savings by storing precious gems in a bag and burying them in a secret spot in their house.

We find our priest erudite but not pompous, humorous without being flippant, lending the ceremony the right touch of gravitas that honoured it.

Finally a prayer to Agni or fire. We move to the backyard for this. Our priest is particularly careful about fire hazards and regulations. Many homeowners simply either turn off their alarms or cover their smoke detectors.

Fire is regarded as the mouth of God, and our offerings are a way to reach God directly. We pray to express our repentance and seek forgiveness for the trees that were cut and animals and insects killed in the making our home as we acknowledge our debt to nature. There is a moment of tension when it looks as if the fire is about to go out — inauspicious, that — but the ambers are revived — phew — and the fire, fed by special sticks and ghee (clarified butter) that I pour in drop by drop, burns merrily for half an hour. We end with a pledge to honour our home.

The ceremony ends with a feast, vegetarian and altogether delicious. Having, as we do, the Rouge Valley in our backyard, it is befitting to place a plate of freshly cooked food out for all the animals and birds and insects — to share with them our joy and to symbolize our coexistence.

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